Natera, Aarhus University to Study ctDNA Assay for Bladder Cancer

Industry Playbook: November 2017

In a new collaboration, Natera and Denmark’s Aarhus University will use Natera’s Signatera personalized liquid biopsy technology to evaluate the utility of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in diagnosing and treating bladder cancer. Signatera was recently launched as a research-use- only test for oncology researchers and biopharmaceutical companies. Natera plans for this study with Aarhus to build toward clinical validation of Signatera along with additional research efforts in other cancer types and expects the test to be available for diagnostic procedures next year.

The study will evaluate more than 400 prospectively obtained plasma samples from patients who underwent treatment for bladder cancer and whose blood was collected serially through chemotherapy and surgery. Aarhus University will sequence data from each patient’s tumor and run it through the Signatera proprietary ctDNA bioinformatics pipeline, enabling custom ctDNA assays for each patient. Personalized ctDNA analysis will then be performed at multiple time points per patient to correlate ctDNA levels with clinical outcomes.